This blog tries to explore the relationship between religion and science. I'm a Christian who sees God in nature and I hope others will find this interesting.
(My e-mail address: alexpeterson14@hotmail.com)

My blog

Hi everyone, this is my first attempt at blogging, please be patient with me. I have always been passionately interested in science and always been a committed Christian who believes in the creative power of God, and I honestly believe that the two are not mutually exclusive. I would like to use this blog to explore this relationship.

Sunday, October 31, 2010

I am baffled by mysteries such as the Golden Ratio, how it can be anywhere and everywhere, in sunflowers and seashells, but most especially in the human body. How is it that this can be so prevalent and yet atheists can say that there is no God? Of course there's a God. God is everywhere, filling me with a sense of absolute wonder and amazement. Mysteries abound. Watch this amazing video.

This takes some reading but it is probably worth it. St. Augustine was a very wise theologian who lived centuries ago and definitely used his head for more than to keep his ears apart. I do not profess to be as wise as he was but it seems obvious to me that the stories of Genesis are for the most part not to be taken literally.

Monday, October 11, 2010

Yesterday, October 10, 2010, was Thanksgiving Day Sunday here in Canada. My wife and I attended church--it was decorated with harvested food--apples, potatoes and of course pumpkins, and lots of colourful leaves all over the place. We sang the songs, listened to the sermon, offered up prayers for those of our friends and families who needed them, and thought about all the blessings in our lives. I cannot but thrill in the beauty of nature at this time of year. This is the world we live in and ours not to spoil. After the service we shared refreshments and reflections with each other. One young lad showed his Mom what he had done in Sunday school class, very amazing and beautiful work. There was a poem in his work:

Part of the love I have for classical music comes from memories of my parents sharing music like this; but back then of course we didn't have benefit of videos. I do remember looking at picture books while listening to this--never having been to this magnificient place I can only dream of doing so. What this has to do with faith I'm not sure, unless it's to think that God is here. What it has to do with science I don't know either, unless geology and geography figure into it. Anyway here it is, enjoy!

David Suzuki at age 74 is still trying to open peoples' eyes and save the planet we all live on. He makes an interesting and scary prediction. Imagine, he says, a test-tube full of food, and a single bacterium introduced into it. In one hour it reproduces itself. Again in another hour. And again, and so on. It would take, he says, 59 hours for the test-tube to be half full of bacteria, and another hour to become completely full. Then he compares the test-tube to Planet Earth and tells us that we have passed the 59th hour. Click on the above link to read the whole piece.

Monday, October 4, 2010

There's a lot of confusion about evolution because we are unable to see things happening in our short life-times. As children we have very short attention spans; this is why entertainment is fed to us in bite-sized cartoon form rather than movies or, even better, books. Sometimes as adults this feature of our child-hood carries over in part because we cannot or will not see the whole picture. We think that the description of creation as described in the book of Genesis (six days and all that) is exactly how it all happened, and that six thousand years ago. But we should really look at the evidence. It isn't all black-and-white. Elsewhere in this blog are excerpts from a series called "Discovering Religion"; this is an excellent series which seeks to help explain about evolution and the need to be more open-minded when looking at evidence; more from the same series are to be posted.

Saturday, October 2, 2010

We celebrate today the work of St. Francis of Assisi, who dedicated his life about a thousand years ago to looking after the animals. St. Francis was a very wise man and would teach us a lot about stewardship if only we would listen. In the wake of so many disasters (the Gulf oil-rig explosion is an example), pollution of other kinds (water, air), species extinction and man-caused imbalances of nature we really should learn while there is still time.

Friday, October 1, 2010

David Suzuki, a great Canadian, and a world-renowned environmentalist and Canadian Environment Minister Jim Prentice met on the British Colombia coast to discuss the environment and what should be done to further progress in preserving the environment. This is important because we only have one planet on which we all live. A lot of damage has already been done and might not be possible to undo. This is the world that God gave us and gave to us stewardship, to protect and treasure. This is a video that was shown on CBC news today and I want to share it.http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/News/ID=1605310108